FRUITPUNCHED
by razbliuto
Summary: [A slapdash collection of Methyl Nitrate Pineapple AU's.] Chapter Four — Eleven years ago, Rocinante escapes with Law to Marineford. But the scales demand balance; another takes his place.
1. modernAU: midwinter in four stanzas

**Titled** : Midwinter in Four Stanzas  
 **Pairing** : Law/OC  
 **Setting** : Roommate!AU, slightly older  
 **Length** : 2000 words  
 **Genre** : Friendship, emotionally stable relationships  
 **Summary** : Baby, it's cold outside.  
 **Notes** : I LOVE CHEESY WINTER FICS. Another headcanon ask from Tumblr that imagined itself into a oneshot. Some religious headcanons because a sprinkle of diversity here and there makes the pudding taste better :)

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 _midwinter in four stanzas_

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 **i. deck the halls**

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Wintertime festivities are a quiet occasion in the Strangways-Trafalgar household (which isn't so much a _house_ as it is a cramped, single-bedroom apartment above a Chinese bakery, and they aren't so much a _household_ as they are two broke graduate students who found each other through Craigslist. _Wanted: Roommate, non-smoker, quiet. Must be able to ignore suspicious noises at night. Cannot ask questions about unconscious/bloodied person(s) seen around apartment. No sharing beer._

"Hi," said the cloud of smoke upon opening the door, a lit cigarette held snazzily between two fingertips, "so, I could get a search warrant slapped on this place because of your stupid ad, but I kind of need a place to hide—stay, I mean, stay. Anyway, you know me." She waved the smoke aside, and a shock of frizzy yellow hair and ocean eyes greeted him. "We have O-Chem together."

She shoved her foot between the door when he tried to slam it. It's been three years since then.)

Every day is hectic up until their actual holiday break begins. Exams, work, projects, papers. Sophie rolls out of bed for her 7 AM lab shift, grabs her coffee and mango slices to go, and gives Law's butt a firm kick to make sure he gets up before climbing down the fire escape to her moped (the front door being, of course, blocked by haphazard science experiments). Law makes coffee for three, swings by her work to drop off two, and spends all day at class and then his shift at the hospital. On some nights when they're both too tired to make food he'll hustle the cooks from the tiny French place down the street. But they get nicer as the holidays come around, and sometimes all Sophie has to do is look as sad and pathetic as possible and one of the chefs will sprout hearts for eyes and slip her a free bottle of Merlot.

When their finals wind down and they have a weekend to spare, they compromise on decorations. Sophie likes cheesy embellishments and explosions of glitter. Law likes his corners dark and menacing to brood in. He reasons that a tree would make their already cramped living situation even worse, so he buys a small poinsettia from the local supermarket, a bright red thing with gold foil. She lights a hanukiah by the window and hangs up fairy lights, blue tinsels, and reindeer garlands. (Christmas is _whatever_ but Santa is terrific; she aspires to break into as many houses as he does, worshipped by tiny humans who give you offerings of cookies and milk.)

It comes together in a semi-nice, eclectic sort of vibe: their apartment glows chocolate-chip, fresh-from-the-oven warm, and it makes her want to eat soba with the good dipping sauce, huddled under the canopy of a blanket fort, forever and ever.

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 **ii. a warm hearth**

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Their first day of break is also the first day that it snows. Fort Sophie is an optimistic attempt, a big blanket draped over three chairs, textbooks holding it in place, in the alcove of the bedroom window. Law brings in hot apple cider and Sophie heats up sugar cookies using a blowtorch. She sticks her cold feet on Law's lap. Her sneaky toes crawl under his sweater, searching for the warmth of his stomach.

He glowers, but otherwise lets her use him as a personal foot heater. Law, Mighty Unmovable Mountain. You could stick a scalpel into the palm of his hand and he'd growl _is that the best you've got_ in the deepest, most toe-curling voice that makes you want to ask if you can do it again to his other hand, but _slower_.

Sophie flexes her toes against his abdomen. "A party? I dunno." She bites off the head of a Pillsbury snowman. "I do better mano-a-mano."

"When people are forced to talk to you."

"And can't escape or talk to someone else, exactly."

"I'm not really up for it, either. Besides, Penguin and Shachi are going to stumble in here stone-cold drunk and we have to make sure they don't set this place on fire like last time." Law sticks his head out the window, catching snowflakes on his tongue. White flakes fall across his hair. His black hair looks almost darkblue in certain light, like the bottom of a deep deep well where only fluorescent mushrooms and prehistoric kelp live. Sophie reaches up and brushes the snow from his forehead, then wriggles to peer out the window. The air is so cold she can smell it. "I'll text back Kid and Luffy."

She looks out into the bewintered city, the frosted roads and the people below wiping snow off their cars. Her breath comes out in big white puffs. She blows into his face, open-mouthed, hot and smelling like apple cider and old cigarettes. He lets her for a few moments. And then he wraps his freezing fingers around her waist, right on the skin.

" _Law_!"

Sophie beats his shoulders with her palms, wailing about the sanctity of warm flesh and betrayal of trust and _letgoletgoletgoooooo you big lame fart!_ He is laughing helplessly, his face all chill from winterfrost and his nose runny from the cold, and she kisses him hard on his sticky-sweet mouth while reaching around for an unforgiving fistful of snow to shove in his face.

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 **iii. with a red bow-tie**

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"Hai Xing gave us presents!"

Law looks up. "Who?"

"The guy who owns the bakery downstairs." She clambers in from the fire escape, shivering and slamming the window shut, and investigates the contents of her package. Pineapple bread, egg tart, rousong bun, boba tea. Their favorites. "He's right down the hall. Lived here three years and you never said hi?"

"I say hi." Law accepts an egg tart.

"Grunting when you pass by each other does not count."

"He gives me fortune cookies with the bad luck warnings in them. I'm pretty sure he thinks we make meth for a drug trafficking ring."

She hangs up her coat and sits next to him on the couch, texting Hippo—who is working with Doctors Without Borders in Swaziland, but not before vacationing in South Africa and sending her a picture of the orphanage he grew up in. "Why would you say that?"

"He asked me if we make meth for a drug trafficking ring."

"We should dress like Walt and Jesse and invite him over."

"Sounds good, yo."

"Does this make me Walt?"

"Well. Yeah. You're the one who actually knows how to make meth."

"That was _years_ ago. I've turned over a new leaf." Sophie flips her hair back in some semblance of tumbling gold locks and her scarf gets caught on her wrist and she nearly chokes.

"…"

"I _have_."

"…"

"Gawd, that's your response to everything, isn't it?"

"Dot dot dot," says him.

He gets her a crate of illegal-to-own chemicals (there are blood stains on the side; she blushes to her ears, _how sweet_ ) and a pair of new mittens for Hannukah. Sophie admires her fuzzy Chopper Man mitts in the firelight and Law spends the rest of the evening playing with his handmade obsidian scalpel. ( _Happy late Mawlid, you pineapple. Who wants to open holiday presents by themselves, anyway?_ ) They talk about birthright and hajj and pilgrimages. She is twenty-three with three more years to meet her motherland's eligibility requirements; Law is twenty-seven, and he's been to Mecca and Medina, a twofer on divinity. They're agnostic, most of the time. God is like the poinsettia on the kitchen table. They water it only when they remember, and yet, it persists.

God is genderfluid, says Sophie. God is a black woman, says Law. You know what, it's fine either way.

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 **iv. the longest night of the year**

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Law is twenty-seven, and Sophie can taste his melancholy. The cemetery he visits is a bleak field of white, weepy iron angels staring at you from beyond the grave, and she wants to string electric lights all over and holler loud enough to wake the dead, except it's not _appropriate_ only what's appropriate anyway when you're twenty-seven and you've got a trifecta of tattooed hearts to mourn the one you lost.

( _Except it doesn't ever make up for it_ , she thinks heavily, leaning against a frost-bitten tree and watching Law kneel down on the snow, speaking softly—she can see the puffs of breath leaving his mouth—gold earrings and a black coat and blacker tattoos in the silent graveyard, hands empty but full of fiercely-whispered promises.)

Winter in the city is surreal. Sophie is pretty sure she bums a cigarette off a yellow-haired angel on the subway. Ghosts play for loose change and pocket-flint on the sidewalks, smog streams slowly by cathedral windows, and its bells toll a lonely staccato hymn that feels like the last vestige of an ancient hiemal ritual. Somebody somewhere is reciting _The woods are lovely dark and deep, but I have promises to keep._ Getting lost is easy when everything's the same color. Adonai took their white-out marker and scribbled over the whole city, so she wears her most colorful socks as a homing device and navigates by candy-floss Christmas trees. _And miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep_.

As promised, Penguin and Shachi stumble in from the fire escape, consumed by champagne-fizzy giggles. Bepo follows, a big white-haired boy with the sweetest eyes you've ever seen. They come in search of warmth and haul along presents: beer and hot melty cheese pizza, still steaming when she opens the box, and Law provides a tower of different-flavored rice balls, Sophie the lemon-meringue pie. Carolers come by and Bepo opens the window to sing along, his voice a lovely baritone lute that floats through the creak-hiss of steam radiators, until Shachi puts him in a headlock and hoots that he's upstaging those poor kids, _ya nerd_!

Law doesn't _get_ drunk, but when he does, he gets _drunk_. He drops his head on Sophie's shoulder, mumbling in her ear _osteoblasts are responsible for bone formation_ , and it would've been embarrassing to _all heck_ if everyone hadn't been so bubbly with post-dinner satisfaction they could've floated right up to the shining gates of heaven itself before popping in a burst of lemon-meringue-pie laughter. He falls asleep on her shoulder and Penguin topples over Bepo, and Shachi follows suit, and they're all huddled in a circle in front of the fireplace, drunkenly kicking each other and whispering, eyes half-closed.

Sophie cracks open the window, listening to the faint hallelujahs in the frosty air. Law stirs in the cold draft, wakes up briefly to wrap his fingers around hers, and settles back on her shoulder.

She looks out the window and breathes, slow and quiet so as to not disturb the yellow-haired angel sleeping on the fire escape. His wings are stretched out, nearly blocking her view of the snowy skyscrapers and the perpetual exhaust hanging low over the city. The nights are long and filled with twinkling lights and she sings drowsily, _l'chaim, l'chaim, l'chaim_.


	2. roadtripAU: where the sidewalk ends

**Titled** : Where the Sidewalk Ends  
 **Pairing** : Heart Nakama-ship, obligatory OCs  
 **Setting** : Roadtrip!AU  
 **Length** : 3000 words  
 **Genre** : Friends who get you to sing Shakira  
 **Summary** : A proper road narrative consists of three things: driving through deserts, searching for bathrooms, and seeing chthonic beings on the highway.  
 **Notes** : I turned this into a collection of AU's, because I feel bad for posting this stuff on Tumblr before FF. If anybody's waiting for an MNP update, I hope this tides you over. Or not. Feel free to extract yourself from this nonsense.  
 **Notes2** : I have a lot of feelings about roadtrips. Look forward to part two!

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 _where the sidewalk ends_

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 _ **i.**_

They pile into Penguin and Shachi's banged-up 1996 Jeep Wrangler. Penguin slides into the front passenger seat, bringing up Google Maps on his phone.

She barely notices the strange smiley face graffitied on the side of their jeep anymore. It's just a part of their weird clan aesthetic, and she can't imagine them being without it, like she can't imagine Shachi without his cracked Save the Sharks phone case, or Hai Xing not taking pictures of everything he eats.

Logistics: they barely fit, but they do.

Anko slams the driver's door shut.

 ** _ii._**

"Oh my gooooood…"

Traffic is at a crawl. The horizon steams with the crush of metal, sparkling tire rims, highway signs that announce your destination is anywhere but here.

"Oh myyyyy goood." Anko hits his head repeatedly on the wheel.

Law is sleeping in the back row with Bepo, his feet resting by Sophie's head. She seriously considers throwing a tantrum, then takes this opportunity to sew up the frayed edges of his jeans.

"I gotta pee." Shachi.

"We literally left thirty minutes ago." Penguin.

"I didn't have to pee then. Obviously."

Sophie hands him an empty plastic bottle. Shachi stares at this for a full ten seconds.

" _I cannot go in there_!"

"Why not?"

He flares red.

"Just run outside and go in the bushes and then jump back in," Anko suggests.

" _Don't do that_ ," Penguin says emphatically.

"Stop being a baby and pee in the bottle!"

Shachi despairs. "Okay, but, but, but you have to go in the back row!"

"I won't look, so–"

" _Go_!"

Rolling her eyes, Sophie clambers past Hai Xing–who is furiously training his Snorlax before battling an Elite Four–over her seat to the back row. She manages to squish on the very edge next to Law.

"You're in my sun," he tells her.

"That's nice."

" _And cover your ears_!"

The cars finally start speeding up again. Anko cranes his neck around and thumps the wheel. " _Where's the accident, fuckers_? _Where is it_?"

He swerves lanes and throws his middle finger up at the resulting horn blares. With a keen sense for death, Bepo plasters himself to Law, who spends the next three minutes prying the furry monstrosity off his face. The jeep proceeds to consider implosion.

"I CANNOT AIM IN THIS MANNER," Shachi hyperventilates.

Sophie peels herself from the window. "Anko," a worrying thought strikes her, "when did you get your license?"

"Okay, look. I've never been caught, so no one needs to worry."

"Um, Law," yell several horrified passengers. Law drags Bepo off him and harshly wheezes for breath, momentarily incapacitated. Sophie's camera flashes wildly. Penguin beams Anko with a torque wrench.

"I want my innocence back," Shachi announces in a quavering voice.

The car screeches to a halt. They discover Anko doesn't have a license, nor is a legal citizen of the country. He is distinctly smug about all this.

 ** _iii._**

In the distance, there are vast mountains that look like the red hands of a god who hasn't quite broken the surface yet. They pass overturned chairs on the highway, empty plastic tables under white tarps. Miles and miles of nothingness under a hot blue sky. Penguin is at the helm and Shachi is navigating, only he is actually taking blurry unusable pictures of the scenery, but Penguin's okay with that because, well, he's Shachi. Kicked to the back of the car with Bepo, both enduring a time-out, Anko snapchats everyone.

And so the following conversations ensue:

 **To** : Anko Hot Buns McGee  
 **From** : Sophie  
 _Why are you snapping me pictures of your toe, I am right here. Also, disgusting. Also, I am going to block you. You are blocked._

 **To** : Ankomageddon  
 **From** : Shachi  
 _i showed ur pic to law and he says u might wanna get that checked out_

 **To** : CAPTAIN BONE-CRUNCH  
 **From** : ANKO  
 _AM I GOING TO DIE_

 **To** : Anko  
 **From** : Law  
 _Not from athlete's foot, no._

 **To** : Anko  
 **From** : Law  
 _But I can imagine a few other scenarios._

 **To** : Starfish-kun  
 **From** : Sophie  
 _So when in Pokemon do you take over the world and form an iron-fisted dictatorship to crush your those who defy you underneath your heel, taking all that they hold dear and leaving nothing but humiliation in their wake?_

 **To** : Hitchhiker  
 **From** : Hai Xing  
 _that's called animal crossing, not pokemon (/ 'з')/  
it's good ヾ(￣◇￣)ノ  
want to play? ( ・◇・)？  
well, you can play after i'm done (•̀⌄•́)  
_

 ** _iv._**

By midday, the jeep overheats. They take a break at a gas station in the middle of nowhere, and Penguin and Shachi investigate under the hood, coughing as a cloud of red dust explodes in their face.

Shaking dust from her shirt–really, it's everywhere–Sophie wanders inside the gas station. The cashier is engrossed on the grainy tv, some riots breaking out in a couple cities across the country, but it is far away from here. She finds Law slouching through the snack aisle. He is holding a suspicious amount of pixie sticks and flaming hot cheetos for a man of his brooding ability.

"We need proper sustenance," she announces.

He shows her a bag of veggie crisps and beef jerky. "Fiber and protein."

For all of their sakes, she _really_ hopes there's a restaurant nearby. They stand in line, her digging red dust from under her fingernails.

She pays for her cigarettes and a carton of mint chocolate chip and rocky road. There's a suggestion of calcium in there, at least. He kicks the door open and holds it for her. _What a gentleman_ , she almost says, if it wouldn't sound so mocking.

 ** _v._**

"Do you see the diner?"

Hai Xing nods. "Turn right."

"What, here?"

"No, ten minutes ago."

" _What_?"

"Yeah, you missed it ten minutes ago."

"I thought you were navigating!"

"I was." He holds up his DS. "I was navigating to Cerulean City."

"I SWEAR, YOU ARE ALL INEPT." Sophie throws her phone over her shoulder at Law. It hits Bepo instead, who is rudely distracted from licking himself and starts yelling. Or barking. Sophie thinks Bepo has more human mannerisms than a dog should have. Or a bear. Some bear-dog hybrid, she _really doesn't know._

"Don't turn left! You're going back on the highway." Law pokes around Google Maps. Shachi and Penguin immediately chime in.

"Head into that parking lot!"

"Do a U-turn here!"

"Use tackle," Hai Xing advises. Sophie slaps him in arm repeatedly until she almost mows down a group of picketers protesting something about the country going to hell. He has the gall to add, "It's not very effective."

"No one's letting me into the other lanes!" She's blocked in. The jeep shudders onto the highway, single-file formation.

"Assholes," snarls the Predominate Asshole, reaching around Sophie to slam the horn.

"Don't _do_ that–see, now they're flipping me off. Oh, great. Thanks for noth–HEY!" She gasps so deeply Law might've heard a lung pop. " _Do you talk to your mothers with that mouth, villain_?" Sophie rolls down the window, her face rapidly becoming blotchy. The other cars are treated to the sight of an enraged woman hollering fruit names at the top of her lungs.

Law retreats, "Never mind, ignore them and get off at the next exit– _watch out_!"

Sophie slams the gas and careens through three lanes. Their screams are so loud the ceiling light on the jeep cracks.

"OH MY GOD." Shachi, obviously congratulating Sophie's top-notch driving skills. No one is dead, which is the most important thing.

"FURIOSAAAA!" Anko hangs his whole torso out the window. Penguin subtly reaches for the torque wrench again.

 ** _vi._**

The desert turns red to grey to yellow. Shachi equips his shades and follows the flow of a thousand other cars, driving into the flaming persimmon of a sunset. Hai Xing pulls out a machete and doles out pieces of watermelon.

They roll down all the windows: going ninety down a wide, endless highway, and it is the perfect–nay, the only–scenario to blast the most obnoxious music on hand. However, there is a problem: no one wants to listen to Law's iPod, because it only has Schubert on it.

"It's the _fully remastered album_ ," he stresses.

Even Bepo, who is usually so loyal because he is smart enough to _know_ where his snacks come from, shakes his head. Traitors.

Sophie raises her hand.

"We are not playing the Bill Nye theme song again," Law snaps.

"Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill!"

Anko chucks a magazine at her. Sophie rolls it up and uses it as a megaphone. "Inertia is a property of matter…"

"Hey, I'm the driver!" says Shachi. "Driver gets to pick the music, that is the universal law of the road."

They all wait for his royal decree.

"…Have you heard of the award-winning anime series Naruto Shippuden Opening Number One: Hero's Come Back?"

Penguin throws his shoe at Shachi. Shachi calmly responds to this by yelling "SECRET TECHNIQUE: DISAPPEAR JUTSU," and chucks the shoe out the window.

They spend the next three hours bickering over what to play, and end up compromising by listening to the radio. In this period Hai Xing beats Pokemon twice.

By evenfall, the road empties so that they only pass another car only once every ten miles or so. Law takes over the wheel. They grab coffee and a bite to eat at a Starbucks (there is always a Starbucks, even when there is nothing else around, and especially when you need one the most; it is probably enchanted that way).

 ** _vii._**

The sky is all lavenders and lilacs, and the car is quiet. Beside her, Shachi and Penguin are sleeping on each other, their fingers curling gently together. It makes Sophie feel very pink inside and she scoots closer to the window to give them more space.

Anko plucks a few experimental strings on his ukulele, and then fires off into a fast, complicated opening, fingers flying across the strings and the fretboard. He leans over Law, strumming his ukulele. "Señorita, what's your number?"

He doesn't take look away from the road, but there is definite disapproval in his eyebrows.

Penguin is now very much awake. "Lemme see you move like you come from Colombia," he sings, grooving and nudging Shachi with his elbow.

"Why did I let you people talk me into a road trip?" Law wonders aloud.

"I never really knew that he could dance like thiiiiiiis!" Sophie warbles, pointing at Law. He does not dignify this with a response.

"He makes a man want to speak Spanish," Shachi croons.

"Como se llama," Hai Xing says in a dead monotone.

" _Si_!"

"Bonita!"

" _Si_!"

They wait, expectantly. Bepo nudges Law's arm.

"…Mi casa," he grits out, "su casa."

" _Shakira, Shakira_!" comes a rousing cheer, and they dive right into the chorus.

 ** _viii._**

They stop at a Mcdonald's for coffee and chicken nuggets. Neon signs buzz, lonely-like. They huddle in the jeep, shivering, sharing fries and ketchup cups.

At one am, everything is eerie.

The desert is cold at night, even in the summer. They huddle under blankets and jackets, and Law turns off all the lights, turns up the heat.

Coyotes stop and prick their ears up as they pass by, their ghostly-bright eyes reflecting the headlights. She hears a howl, then another, silence; then, a small, lonely wail. Hai Xing is the only one among the rest who is still awake; he holds her hand for a while, then retreats under a blanket.

She curls up in her seat. The night grows weirder on a highway.

She imagines she sees a distant thunderstorm, lightning flashing in bursts of stark desert-silhouettes, counts the seconds in-between. The car headlights illuminates a row of cacti, waving at the roadside, and she imagines a whole landscape of them, a spiny, bulbous forest hiding just beyond the dark. She counts power lines like sheep.

They drive, and drive, and drive.

Then it appears.

An industrial factory hisses steam, trembles, turns its creaking neck to their little jeep. A million red lights watch them, unblinkingly. She thinks it is something from the future. It is a living, breathing monster, exhaling rolling towers of smoke. It shakes sleep off its back, the black towers and industrial cranes shivering. The belly is on fire, heartbeat thumping orange. It chokes out more smoke and howls, urgently, and the jeep shakes in the wind like a leaf. The ground trembles, the earth kicks up, no, no, it will not allow it to to move, to poison the world further.

"Law," she whispers.

"I see it." He grips the wheel and gasses the pedal.

It takes five minutes to drive past the whole factory, but they do. Its roars grow smaller and smaller, and then it's gone.

 _ **ix.**_

The acid-green analog clock glows _4:25_. Radio static clears as the jeep finally gets decent reception, "The fire at the military fort is still under investigation–top brass now getting involved–"

He turns to another station.

"–update on a strange virus hitting the northeast–CDC has quarantined yet another neighborhood–"

He hits the power button. Sophie shifts, mumbles.

"Go to sleep."

She says nothing for a while, and Law thinks she's actually done something surprising for once and listened to him, until she murmurs, "It's not ever going to be far enough."

He has an answer for that. It's a good answer: "Then we'll just keep going."

She leans against the window, using a worn book as a pillow, heavy with scotch tape bound around the spine. _The Emperor of All Maladies_. And then she sets it down, because Law has been driving for hours and he doesn't even get to listen to Hai Xing battle Team Rocket or Shachi corrupt anime theme songs.

"Have you heard of the relic radiation of space?"

"No," he says, which she doesn't anticipate, but that's to be expected since she doesn't really know anything about him other than he's probably very smart and probably not a serial killer, "tell me about it."

"It's thermal radiation and the oldest light in the universe, dating all the way back to the Big Bang–"

"Do you study astronomy?"

"No, but I read it in an article, and it's _cool_. So, once upon a time," she motions with theatrical flair, "when the universe was young–"

"How young? Infant young? Grade school young? Barely out of utero young? Got to be specific about these things."

"Listen, I don't know how to convert the billions of universe years into our tiny human years. Just young, alright?"

"Sure, sure, go on."

"Once upon the time, the storyteller continues, before she was so rudely interrupted…"

 ** _x._**

He shuts off the ignition and reaches back, pokes Bepo awake, who promptly licks Shachi, who yelps and kicks Anko in the eye, setting off a chain reaction. Sophie is already out of the car, running, the door swinging after her.

She jumps across the sidewalk, kicks off her shoes, and sloshes into the water. The ocean air is crisp, bracing. She walks as far as she can, the ocean rising to her thighs, her toes pressing into sifting sand. The wide, golden horizon leaves her with a feeling of wanting to swim as far as she can across the water. Endlessly, without direction: an infinite roadtrip. Her feet cling onto kelp and driftwood, a current away from flinging her off into the blue. _Going, going, gone_.

Shachi jumps on her shoulders and she nearly topples over, her toes digging into the sand, yelping as he splashes her with water. Bepo leaps after them, leaping through the tide. Law stands at the edge of the water, toeing it carefully, until Anko and Penguin run up and shove him on top of Bepo. She hears his swears over the rolling waves and blinks seawater from her eyes, and she can't get enough air, she's laughing so hard. Seagulls soar low, their calls echoing over the seashells and marram grass and half-washed-away sandcastles.

Hai Xing takes his phone out. They take pictures of the sunrise, of each other.

Sophie takes the most pictures. She takes them to remember, just in case.

They dry off on the sand, the ocean lapping at their toes. And then Law stands up. One by one, brushing sand off their clothes, they follow suit, until Sophie is the only one still on the beach. She hears the jeep start.

After a while, she picks herself up, stretches, finds her shoes, and walks up the sand dune to where the jeep is rumbling. It is a long way north, and they are out of snacks.


	3. roadtripAU: how many miles to babylon?

**Titled** : How Many Miles to Babylon?  
 **Pairing** : Heart Nakama, obligatory OCs  
 **Setting** : Roadtrip!AU  
 **Length** : 1700 words  
 **Genre** : Two alpha nerds try to out-alpha nerd each other, it's embarrassing  
 **Summary** : They'd paint her like they'd paint buffalo skulls. Americana kitsch, coca-cola and white picket fences.  
 **Notes** : Prequel to the previous chapter. I wrote this out of order, so out of order it shall stay!  
 **Notes2** : Roadtrip!AU? More like 'a cleverly disguised metaphor for escapism and wanting to leave all of your problems behind' AU!

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 _how_  
 _many_  
 _miles_  
 _to_  
 _babylon?_

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 ** _i._**

Shachi first passes her somewhere on a forest roadside. She is wearing all-green camo, so it is understandably easy to to miss. Besides, the horizon is smoking. A military fort nearby is on fire. Penguin adjusts the radio.

The next time they pass her, she is wearing a teenybopper Hello Kitty shirt and her hair is stark black and chopped to her ears. Her knees are bleeding. She holds her thumb up and swears fruitfully at the cars rushing by without so much a glance. A car slows down, catcalls, and speeds up again. She sprints after it, kicking the air and hollering, throws a rock at them.

The third time, she's sitting in the shade of a gas station, cigarettes littered around her like pigeons. Maybe she's homeless. Maybe she's waiting for someone. Maybe she's a prostitute. Shachi thumbs a distressed patch of pleather on the wheel. No one else in the gas station seems to notice her, passing by like she's a part of the wall. He doesn't want to say anything. It's not his business, right.

Penguin knocks on the hood. Alright. Good to go.

She watches them, a cigarette dangling limply from her teeth.

A shiver crawls up Shachi's spine. She looks like she could collapse at any moment and dissolve into the asphalt. Girls found in dumpsters. They'd paint her like they'd paint buffalo skulls. Americana kitsch, coca-cola and white picket fences.

He stops the car and rolls down the windows. "Hey! Need a ride?"

 ** _ii._**

"Hi, I'm Sophie." She trips up to the jeep. Her smile is bright and very, very hard. "Got room for one more?"

Casquette adjusts his cap and glances at his friend–Penguin, she reads on his hat–who shrugs.

"How 'bout it?" the redhead calls to the backseat.

Rounding out the three amigos, the man in the back is reading a book. _The Emperor of All Maladies_. She likes the book. It's very smart. She thinks he might be smart, if he didn't look so scary and… greasy.

He glances at her, very briefly.

"'It remains," he quotes, turns the page, "an astonishing, disturbing fact that in this nation - a nation where nearly every new drug is subjected to rigorous scrutiny as a potential carcinogen, and even the bare hint of a substance's link to cancer ignites a firestorm of public hysteria and media anxiety - one of the most potent and common carcinogens known to humans can be freely bought and sold at every corner store for a few dollars.'"

Sophie stares at him. She thinks about stubbing her cigarette out on the windshield. Instead, she flicks the cigarette from her mouth and grinds her heel on it.

"Yeah," Casquette says, "he's always like that. So. Anyway. Welcome aboard."

He introduces himself and his two carmates, only she forgets their names as soon as she hears them. Her brain is still muggy with adrenaline. "We're actually on our way to pick up some friends," he tells her, "and then we're heading to the ocean, and then probably up north from there."

She shows them her pearly-whites and says something about soul-searching, traveling wherever the wind takes her. It's not totally a lie if you believe it hard enough.

 ** _iii._**

It is a long way to the ocean. Penguin tells her she hasn't seen anything yet; they're still in a civilized area, wait till they get to the cornfields. They spend twenty minutes at a tourist shop in the middle of bumfuck nowhere because Casquette and Penguin insist they need to buy a keepsake. So she sits in her seat, next to the door like a proper hitchhiker ready to jump out if things go south, her foot tapping a vicious beat on the floor.

The scary man's legs are sticking out the window. Had been, the whole ride down the highway. He doesn't seem to be aware of how stupid that is. His furry companion is also fond of leaning out the window–like pet, like human?

He digs out a switchblade from his boot–which she is pretty sure is illegal in this state, but figures she shouldn't say anything when she has a Jericho semi-automatic nestled in her backpack. He starts picking at his teeth with the blade. She snorts under her breath.

"I heard that."

She leans over the back of her seat. "'The art of medicine is long, Hippocrates tells us, and life is short; opportunity fleeting; the experiment perilous; judgment flawed.'"

He looks over _The Emperor of All Maladies_.

She twists back around and mutters, "You're not the only one who's ever cracked open a book."

Casquette knocks on the window, pointing at the lock.

"We're supposed to be in another state by now," she tells them–scolds, really–when they stumble inside.

"But tourist shot glasses!" Casquette shows her. It has a picture of a squirrel wearing sunglasses.

"Cute," she says grudgingly.

Penguin slips in the driver's seat and fiddles with the radio. "Did you hear about the explosion at the military base?"

Static crackles. "– _tolls close around the interstate, airports shut down_ –"

"We were just there, that's insane."

"Let's head out before traffic hits."

"– _some sort of pathogen affecting areas in the tri-county area–symptoms include incoherency, inability to feel pain, aggressiveness_ –"

"Can I change the channel?" she asks, hands twisting.

"Go ahead," Casquette waves at their pimped-out dashboard. "What music do you like? We've been listening to the same alt-rock station for the past five hours."

"I like Linkin Park," the scary man objects, to which Casquette repeats, murderously, ' _five hours'._

There are too many buttons, neon sticky notes with squiggly faces and labels. _Eject torpedo. Booster NOS. Engage spikes_. _Radio_.

Sophie swallows. Her heart races.

She presses the torpedo button.

The windshield wipers turn on.

 ** _iv._**

"You want a shirt?"

The scary man is awake. She jerks up from daydreaming against the window, blinking away fiery screams and a man with half his skull missing howling against white padded walls–

"If you're going to shoplift, steal something in your size." He points at her Hello Kitty ensemble. "The security tag is still on."

She sweats. "I–I d-didn't steal this. I found it in a bin. On a street. A street bin. Bargain sale. Bargain street bin sale."

He crooks an eyebrow. "…So you want a shirt, or what."

Alarm bells ring in her head.

"Is–is this a–a plan to get me naked?" Sophie demands. He doesn't blink.

"Like I'd need a plan for that."

Rude _and_ a deviant. What a combo, dollar ninety-nine. All he has to do now is come with a soft drink on the side.

He scrounges around a duffel bag and tosses her the first shirt he finds. It's soft with years of wear, and smells of kerosene and ash. It's a very familiar scent.

"…Did someone start a fire in this?"

"Not recently."

Her knees nudge together. "Hey, look forward."

"Jesus," he scoffs, and she wallops the back of his seat with her foot.

"I _said_ –"

" _Okay_." He looks forward, then scoots his seat back. There is a surprised yelp. "My bad."

She kicks him once more and dives to the opposite end of the row before he can cause anymore undue trauma. Her new shirt fits like a sack. She can pass for a boy–it's good, she likes it. He glances in the rearview mirror, then looks forward into the beacon of early onset diabetes that was a 7-11.

His phone buzzes with a new text. He checks it and sighs. "They're going to take a while."

"Why?"

"In my experience," he says seriously, "a debate between mint chocolate chip and rocky road takes at least thirty minutes to settle."

She clambers into the passenger seat. Sophie reminds herself for the umpteenth time to get Casquette or Penguin's number, so she can furtively text them and ask what this guy's name was again. He looks younger under the cloak of dusk, a little less barbed.

She thinks about asking his age, teeters on the edge of her seat, and says instead, "What would you do if I told you I'm from the military and a zombie apocolypse is nigh and we should be running for our lives?"

"You sound like Hai Xing," he says, after a pause.

"Who?"

"Never mind. I'm hungry."

His complete lack of reaction to her announcement is slightly distressing. But Sophie considers the fact that she'd probably die happier on a full stomach. "You wanna grab a burger?"

He sucks in air between his teeth. "I like fries."

"It's not like they're mutually exclusive, jeez."

"Shirt's on backwards, by the way."

"Oh. There's no tag, I couldn't tell."

"Yeah," he starts up the ignition, "I always cut them off."


	4. roleswapAU: librae infinitum

**Pairing** : Law/OC  
 **Setting** : Role Swap!AU  
 **Length** : 3100  
 **Genre** : Speculative irony; drama  
 **Summary** : Eleven years ago, Rocinante escapes with Law to Marineford. But the scales demand balance; another takes his place.  
 **Notes** : I promised this like two years ago. Whoops.

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 _librae infinitum_

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Rocinante picks new flowers for the table every Sunday.

( _Rocinante_ , not Cora-san. Of all the things for Law to get used to, that's among the hardest.)

Marineford has a stable climate with mild winters and long, bright summers. Rocinante plants sweetpea and petunias, honeysuckles and daises, and grows rosemary and thyme to sprinkle over scrambled-egg-toast. He grows them on the balcony of the apartment Sengoku moved them in, just four blocks down from the Marine Academy that Law attended.

Top of his class, stellar recommendations, mentored in battle tactics by Tsuru and combat by Sengoku. He spends three years apprenticing with Smoker as his ship's doctor. When the World Government officially gives him the epithet 'Surgeon of Justice', Rocinante almost falls off the balcony in giddiness. Which was a feat in and of itself, considering the wheelchair.

Law's heard of the Supernova Ten in the papers, especially the Straw Hat kid. But that's outside his jurisdiction. He only hears stories about his former Captain's run-ins with the boy. Tashigi sends him letters venting about the calamitous Straw Hat crew and one particular Meito-hoarding, _refusing to fight me for whatever dumb fucking reason_ fuckhead among them. He likes the swordswoman and her omnipresent Meito nerdiness. Something about her fierce tenacity reminds him of Baby 5, and something about Baby 5 used to remind him of Lamie. Little sisters, huh.

Rocinante has Sunday poker nights. It consists of whoever's off-duty and wants to hang out with a cold beer on the balcony. Sometimes it's Captain Hina and Smoker, who leave the apartment smelling like lilac perfume and cigars; sometimes Garp and his two boys show up, the recruits he's taken under his wing. "I'm having the gang over later," Rocinante tells him. "When you come back, I'll make yellow snapper and pasta."

Law ties his hair into a ponytail. Once he graduated from the Marine Academy (with flying colors, Rocinante likes to brag to every human, animal, and flowerpot), he lets it grow out, like his mother once did. _Peace_ , he inks on his knuckles, both hands. To remind him of what he's fighting for.

He's the captain of his own ship now. Captain Law. He's starting slow, mostly patrolling the waters around Marineford and building up the trust and loyalty of his crew. They're all good men and women, who follow his orders without question. Without so much as a laugh. It feels like ordering a bunch of toy soldiers around. Everyone tells him it just needs some getting used to.

"Be safe," Rocinante says, his voice striving for optimism.

"I'll be back next week." Law bends down and brushes his cheek against Rocinante's.

He can do that now, touch people. He can look at himself in the mirror, study the young man in his clean Marine whites, and not want to throw one of Rocinante's flowerpots at it.

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There's a ghost in the midst of the Donquixote Pirates.

It lounges on the empty Heart seat between Spades and Diamond. Nobody talks about it. It lingers in the corner of mirrors, two faceless shadows at the dinner table. Sophie always feels a step out of place.

"He was our brother," Baby 5 says. "He would've been yours, too."

When she asks what happened, Baby 5 sucks in a small breath, her little forehead pulled in a grimace. She flounces away, her red bow swaying with the motion, and calls over her shoulder, "Doffy couldn't kill them."

It surprises her. She didn't know there were things in this world that her captain couldn't kill.

Sophie imagines a dark, scrawny boy sitting next to her at dinner. He'd be grim and morose, as Baby 5 described him, and he'd probably threaten to decapitate her with his fork. He'd be wearing a fuzzy hat and a dirty button-up shirt. He was kind of shit at fighting, according to Buffalo, so Sophie thinks she could've taken him on. Punch his face out, that's what she'd do. 'Cept he'd be four years older than her, and that's kinda an unfair advantage. And there was Doffy's traitor brother, too, but neither Baby 5 nor Buffalo speak of him. They get angry when Sophie asks, and Baby 5 once clubbed her in the head for asking too much, and so she stopped.

She brews poisons for Doflamingo: cyanide, hemlock tea, belladonna on the rocks. Monet teaches her how to pluck her eyebrows and also how to stab the biggest veins in the body for cleaner killings. Dellinger shows her how to wear a pair of stilettoes, back straight, chest forward, heels first, no, don't look _down_ , silly girl. (She swallows down his lecture like medicinal tonic, and bets the third would-be Corazon never went through this torture.)

When she turns sixteen, the captain gets her a gift. It's a five-foot-tall nodachi, a trim of white fur on the handle. He calls it Kikoku, a cursed sword from North Blue. It's not a Meito, but it's not worthless enough to throw away either. Sophie doesn't know what the beans she's gonna do with it.

Sugar rests her cotton-candy head on Doflamingo's shoulder. Dellinger giggles behind his delicate fingers. They are all different, but they are steeped in power and furious elegance. Sophie and her awkward hands and incoherent stutters—don't belong. Sometimes it hurts being among them and the little games they play. Palace intrigue in the Donquixote Court. Sophie is much, _much_ better at losing than she is at the opposite.

Sometimes marines come to perform diplomacy at the seat of the king's throne. The Family puts on their best show when this happens, whispering malice. Marines are scum. The World Government is scum. The only good thing about them is that they're scum you can use. Otherwise, put a bullet in their heads and be done with it.

"But Doffy," she says one day, "you took me from a Marine ship. Wasn't I one of them?"

Doflamingo pats her head, running his fingers through her curls. "Don't think too much about it."

In her room, Sophie examines herself in the mirror. She unsheathes Kikoku and clenches it in her sweaty palms. She gives her reflection a hard, angry smile _._ Her lipstick smears on her teeth.

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He rounds up a crew of motley pirates. They're an interesting bunch, with even a polar bear mink among them. Their co-captains constantly bicker in the brig of Law's ship, but once they hear his name, they mention that a pirate is asking around for the Surgeon of Death, and then they go back to arguing. Law's curiosity gets the better of him. If a pirate is asking to be arrested, who is he to refuse?

The island is small; there's only one town and one bar, and in that bar there's a young woman sitting at the counter. Her hair is long and golden and she's got a sword slung across her back, one that's much too big for her.

"Hi," she says to him. "Buy me a drink?"

Law ignores her, glancing around the bar. "I'm looking for someone."

"Hi," the girl says again. "That'd be me. I've always wanted to meet you, big bro. It's like I'm m-meeting a dream for the first time, except, ya know, you're _real_."

He gives her an odd look. "You've got the wrong—"

"Ah. Wait, s-sorry." She shakes her head, her face pink. "That was w-weird. Let me start again. Nerves, you know?"

Law catches a glimpse of her scarred wrist. A tattoo is nestled inside the crook of her skin—a crossed-out smiley face.

Her smile is slow like freezing water. It doesn't reach her eyes. "Doffy wants you to come home, _nii-chan_."

He grabs his gun.

Her Haki is good. She avoids his Room with a one-handed jump-flip and smashes her way through the bar. A shadow hovers just beneath her skin: a thirteen-year-old boy with amber tick-tick-ticking in his heart and a string of grenades running round his chest.

He doesn't know who she is, but he's pretty sure she's needs to die.

She slices through the bar. Her swordplay is slicker than kerosene; he can read Diamante in the flick of her, Pica in the shove of her boots. A string of vegetable insults fly from her mouth; she calls him a rotten pumpkin and an overgrown celery stick. Of course Doflamingo would pick her; she sounds like a veritable nutcase.

"You should keep a sword of your own." She evades another Room with Haki. "Your powers would be good for slicing people up."

"That's frowned upon in my line of work."

"You're not at all what our siblings described you as," she tells him, and kicks him in the face.

"When did Doflamingo pick you off the street?" Law asks, beneath her.

She presses her index finger to her lips, in some sort of waifish contemplation. "Around the time you and the second Corazon betrayed him and fled to Marineford. Oh, but he didn't find me in some dirty alleyway. He spirited me from a Marine ship in retribution," she bends over him, her nodachi slammed into the ground beside his head, "a little girl plucked fresh from the tree." There's no more smile on her mouth, only smeared lipstick. "I was your collateral damage."

For a moment he can't breathe, but then remembers it's because she's sitting on his chest.

Law flips her over and punches her in the stomach. The moment he gets the upper hand, she throws a grenade in the air, blows up the bar, and escapes.

He would've gotten caught in the explosion were it not for a pair of bear paws pulling him out of the way. The bar crashes to the ground and as the dust settles, he turns to look, baffled, at the pirates he thought he'd arrested.

"We weren't, uh, tryin' to escape or anything," says the one with the penguin hat.

Sunglasses prods his companions and hisses, "I _told_ you we should've gone the other way."

"You're gonna arrest us again, aren't you?" the bear asks sadly.

Law rubs his shoulder with a considering look. Finally, he says, "Ever thought of joining the Marines? I need a good crew."

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The Surgeon of Justice looks meaner than any marine she's ever seen.

Oh, pumpkins—he even had the World Government flag tattooed on the back of his hands, PEACE emblazoned on his knuckles like some kind of idiot. He isn't thirteen anymore. She's seen him in dreams more times than she could count, and even she couldn't have imagined the ponytail or the earrings. Which is annoying, because marines should _not_ be hotter than pirates. It is a stated fact.

A couple months after their meet-cute at the bar, Sophie wanders around the streets of Marineford, whistling. A pirate with no bounty and tattoos concealed by long sleeves is easy enough to go undiscovered. She loiters across the street from their flat, watching the two silhouettes in the window. There are marines and marine families everywhere; she smiles as they pass by, waving her fingers at the kids. Chubby little buggers. So cute, so kidnappable. She sort of gets Doflamingo. How could that big pink bird man resist a little cherub, especially one as adorable as she was?

She waits until the sky darkens. By chance, the door of their third-floor flat opens and tall shadow strides out. She watches him head to the corner store down the street, then slinks up to their place and casually breaks in.

The second Corazon flinches as she pins him down with Kikoku's blade to his throat. A bit excessive for a guy in a wheelchair, but you can never be too careful.

"Sorry about this," Sophie says to the kind man with gentle amber eyes. He's older than the photo she once glimpsed on Doffy's desk before he burned holes in it. "You seem nicer than the stories."

She glances around their little two-people apartment, with flowers and herbs growing on the balcony and cups drying in the too-small dishrack. The kitchen smells like curry. It feels more alive than Doflamingo's entire palace, which reeks of ghosts and lost memories.

"You hungry, kid?" he asks her, one inch away from getting his head lopped off. "It's a long way from Dressrosa."

Sophie tilts her head, smiles at him. What an odd man, this uncle of hers. He looks so much like Doflamingo; the same nose, the same jaw, the texture of his hair…

Corazon watches her warily as she examines the wispy ends of his bangs between her fingers. "Law said you wanted to drag us back to my brother."

"He mentioned me?" she asks happily, forgetting the hair.

"Once. Briefly."

"We'll all get to know each other much better on the sail back to Dressrosa," Sophie promises. "Doffy can't wait to see you again."

"Do you love Doflamingo this much?"

"I love him more than you ever did."

"But he stole you away."

Her smile drops. "Just as you stole the child who should've been the third Corazon. He would've made a grand pirate. Thieves, the whole Family."

The front door opens. "You forgot to bring in the mail again, Roci-san," the sound of shoes being taken off, scuffing against the doormat, "I brought back rice and orange juice, and Garp-ya accosted me on the street and forced leftover potato salad on me; it's your call if we should risk it…"

The groceries drop to the floor.

Sophie beams over the sword she's holding to Corazon's neck. Now, she isn't _really_ planning on killing either of them. There's no point in bringing two corpses back to Doffy; he'd just throw a tantrum about not doing it himself. Law makes the correct assumption and Sophie would've gotten two bullets in her brain if she hadn't ducked. The window shatters behind her.

It's hard to fight in such a small place; he lunges across the living room, firing his gun, and maneuvers himself so he's between her and Corazon.

"How did you find," he begins.

"It wasn't that hard. I used to be a marine, too."

The bullet he aims at her throat buries into the wall. She hops over the couch, throwing a fluffy quilt over Law's head as a momentary distraction.

"Why a-are you fighting for the World Government?" she wonders. "Didn't they k-kill your o-old country?"

"Doflamingo will never see you as a real part of his family," he snarls back. "You're just a double for me. A _shit_ replacement."

"Maybe," she agrees, "but I am what I am because of you."

His face contorts. It's a nice expression, and she laughs. His eyes are filled with loathing. He might've been her shadow, her reflection, or her ghost. His hair comes out of his ponytail and she wonders how much he'll hate her after this. She hopes a lot. She hopes he dreams of her now, as she had done for eleven years.

On the balcony, she trips past a row of daisies and baby tomatoes until her back hits the ledge. His gun clicks; empty. She points Kikoku lazily at him, not moving in, and for a moment they're at an impasse.

"Tell me your name."

She does.

"Wait for me in Dressrosa, Sophie," he breathes with a vicious smile that looks far too much like hers, "I'll come find you, and then I will personally kill every last one of you sons of bitches."

"That," she replies, smiling back, "is a _rude_ thing to say to your sister."

"You're not my—"

She leaps backwards and falls into the night.

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The siege of Dressrosa lasts one hundred and twenty-four days.

Sophie's got a bullet in her left shoulder and she's pretty sure a couple of her ribs are broken. Behind her, the city is smoking. The Donquixote reign has fallen to the Fujitora and the Surgeon of Justice's crew.

Trebol, Pica, and Diamante have died. Buffalo didn't make it but Baby 5 did, and Jora shielded Dellinger when the cannons started raining down from the sky. The toys have come back to life, and no one's seen Sugar or Monet, and there's a missing sailboat that Sophie bets is with two sisters who had cut their losses and fled together. At least, she hopes so. She's tired. She's fought and killed as much as she can. But there's still one last job she has to attend to.

She waits in the meadow, and waits, and waits. The cool spring rain comes down harder, and her hair slicks around her face in long, wet coils of yellow. She smiles when she sees him, and leans heavily on Kikoku's handle to stagger to her feet.

Law drags his right leg behind him as he limps closer. He slips more bullets into his flintlock and snaps the barrel shut. The rain feels good against Law's neck. He feels a strange sense of calm. At peace. Like he's right where he belongs.

They size each other up, looking in the mirror.

"That nodachi doesn't fit you," he tells her. The heartbeat in his ears doesn't sound like his.

She spits out blood pooling under her tongue. The breath in her throat could've been another's. "Same g-goes for you and your Marine coat, big bro."

"I'm not your brother. We're not family."

"Then what are we to each other?"

"Something worse," he says, raising his gun. "A terrible balance."

Sophie giggles like a fool, dizzy with exhilaration and blood loss. She raises her neck, back straight, feet poised. She holds Kikoku elegantly, in first position.

The rain strikes a steady beat, and, hand in hand, they go dancing into the netherworld.

 _fin_


End file.
